I participated in writing our Manifesto – Mahama

The governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) has denied stealing ideas in its manifesto from the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

President John Dramani Mahama while addressing chiefs and members of the Ga Traditional Council as well as NDC supporters at the Ga Mantse Palace at Kaneshie on Thursday September 15, said it’s unfounded the NPP’s allegation that his party stole the litany of ideas from its main opponent.

“I was directly involved in writing the manifesto for the NDC and so I know everything that is in that manifesto because I participated. People did not just write it and bring it to me; I participated in writing that manifesto. So, when somebody says we have plagiarised their manifesto, I don’t think he understands plagiarism. Plagiarism is if you steal from a known document and put in another document. But there is no document known as NPP manifesto that we know about so how can we have plagiarised from a document that does not exist? If that document exists, produce it today,” he said.

His comment follows claims by the NPP at a recent Presser which the Director of Communications of the NPP, Nana Akomea, alleged that many of the ideas highlighted during the presentation of the highlights of the NDC’s manifesto on Tuesday September 13 were stolen NPP messages.

But Mr. Mahama said the NDC has a fountain of ideas to make this country better in its second term, should it be re-elected into government.

“They (NPP) say they will produce it on October 18; that gives them enough time to copy as many things in our manifesto as possible. And so they are free, the ideas are there, we have the ideas, we’ve been governing this country, we are running the programmes. We know where we’ve come from, we know where we are going. And so we have the ideas to make this country better and we will continue to do the work to move this country to a new pedestal and I’m certain we will win this election and that by 2021 when I leave office, we would have made Ghana one of the model countries in West Africa and Ghana will be the envy of our sub-region.”